The Antarctic 48 hour film festival is one of the highlights of our year.
The event has been running for a number of years and all research stations in and around Antarctica are eligible to enter a five minute film, which must be made within the 48 hour period, over one weekend in August. It gives everyone a chance to show their hidden film making talents and to use some of their expensive camera equipment.
Each year five things must be included in each film (a quote, a sound, an object, an action and a member of the winter team), with each element chosen by a different Antarctic research station. This year Macca was given the honour of picking one of the five elements. Our contribution was the Crocodile Dundee quote “that’s not a knife, this is a knife”. The other elements were the sound of an old car/bike horn, a tennis (or other) ball, the action of swinging an ice axe and a member of the winter team acting as a scientist.
On Friday night the station assembled in MET (meteorological building) for the planning of the film and pizza, but mostly for the planning. Luckily for us, Shane our plumber had a brilliant idea which involved him dressing up in a onesie costume as a rabbit. After a number of slices of pizza, a script plot line was developed — a tale of forbidden love between a rabbit and a Ranger with a tragic ending.
The next morning, after Saturday brunch, the filming crew (Kat) and the cast (Shane starring as ‘Roger the Rabbit', Stella starring as ‘Ranger Love’, Billy starring as ‘Ranger Hate’ and Mark G starring as ‘the scientist’ as well as Tim and Kate starring as ‘the extras') assembled to make a dream become a reality. The team busily ran around station from location to location filming all the required scenes, only stopping to download video to be brutally cut to pieces edited.
On Sunday we pasted it all together, added some music and voila! “Fur-bidden love” was complete. Well…there was a bit of panic, hair-pulling, swearing at the computer and soul searching, but you get the idea.
Until next time
Mark Baker (Electrician/Film Editor)
Editors note: The film was sent to the Antarctic film festival organisers and was included in the voting with 19 other five minute films made by Antarctic and sub-Antarctic stations. We had a lot of fun watching all of the entries and voting on our favourites. This week the winners were announced and while Macca’s “Fur-bidden love” didn’t win too many accolades, it was great being part of this unique event.
